Ageing or Cellar Beer

I read the following in Ale Street News Vol. 18- no. 1 02-03-09;

The first beer in the new Imperial Series at Otter Creek in Middlebury is a Russian Imperial Stout. Plenty of big malt flavors, low carbonation and mild hoppiness provide a nice fullness in flavor and feel to this l0% warmer that will change in a few years if you can bear to lay it down.

Then found the following on line;

Copied From realbeer.com

Only a few special beers — including many of the strong winter beers currently on liquor store shelves — will improve over time. Bad beer won’t get better; if you expect to be opening a great beer in three years you better be laying down a great beer now. The key elements are residual sugars and yeast, so that fermentation is still going on (albeit at a much slower rate than at the brewery). Here are the basics:

– The best candidates for aging are barley wines, strong ales, some stouts (particularly imperial stouts), Belgian Trappist and abbey beers, and gueuze. Of course, you’re not going to find many gueuzes outside of Belgian, and when you do you can’t be sure how they’ve been handled. Thus they are best left to a trip to Belgium (visit a top flight cafe in Antwerp, such as the Kulminator, and try a few of the hundreds of vintage beers on their menu). Only a few strong lagers are candidates for aging — the most notable being the famous Samichlaus.

– You want to know the history of beers you lay down. It may be exciting to find a dusty old bottle of Thomas Hardy’s Ale (England) or Sierra Nevada Big Foot (California) on the back of a liquor store shelf but you don’t know where that beer has been all these years. It may have been left out in high heat or freezing cold, subjected to bright lights or otherwise mistreated. Buy your beer fresh, label each bottle (both the vintage and when you bought it) and store it with care.

– Vintage beers should be stored at cellar temperature (55-60F, 13-15C). The yeast will do its best work in that range, but won’t like sudden changes in temperature or being bounced around by frequent moving. The less light the better. (Last week we wrote about using a second refrigerator to cellar your beer. You may want to review that in the Beer Break archives.)

– Lay down more than one beer from a vintage; that way you can sample as you go along. You may discover a beer is starting to turn and decide to drink the others. Remember that fruit and spiced beers will lose those characteristics and that hop intensity will start to fade over time.

Don’t be afraid to drink a beer when it tastes great, because there’s every chance it may not be as good next time you pull out a bottle. Also, enjoying it now will give you a good excuse to add something new to your liquid library.

Wine is not the only drink that can be aged for maturation. Many beers benefit from extended aging. We’re not talking about your average beer with a mere shelf life of 3-6 months, tops — before quality begins to degrade. We’re talking about beers that beg for maturation and strict storage like vintage beers, barleywines, imperial stouts, Belgian strong ales, lambics, old ales and so on. Ideally, any type of beer that can be laid-down for a year or two, or even more, in order to build a slew of complexities and thus further its character in a positive way.
If you’re interested in starting your own beer cellar it’s actually pretty easy. First, you’ll need to maintain enough patience and will-power to not drink them too early. This, beyond anything else, is the public enemy number one to your attempts. There’s nothing worse than thinking about that special beer, just sitting there, as it whispers its sweet song to the pleasure portion of the brain, “Drink me”.
Next, you’ll need to buy at least two of each beer. One of the beers you’ll want to drink immediately so you’ll have a comparison in which to judge the aged one – taking some notes if you want. The other beer should be cellared for at least a year.
Now there’s a lot of debate surrounding storing a beer upright vs. laying it down like a wine, specifically towards corked bottles. Some “experts” have faith in the old school wine way, that a corked beer should be kept on its side in order to keep the cork from drying out, while others believe that it doesn’t really matter. In our opinion, ALL beer should be stored upright. Here’s why we believe so, along with some other interesting facts about storage and cork:

Cork cells are impregnated with a waxy material, called suberin, that is almost impermeable to water or gases. Cork is also buoyant due to the presence of trapped air in the cavities of the waterproof dead cells. When cut these cells act as suction-cups and become adhesive, thus making them ideal bottle stoppers.

2. Natural cork is sometimes prone to drying out, however we’ve never had any problems — even with beers aged 10+ years upright. Today’s modern plastic/synthetic, screw cap, agglomerated, technical and capsulated corks are a lot less prone to shrinkage, to the point where it’s not even worth worrying about. If a beer has been both corked and capped or corked then waxed, cork shrinkage is definitely not a major concern.

3. The inside of the bottle already contains its own humidity level, and as a result will not dry out the portion of the cork inside the bottle if stored properly. So the idea of laying a beer down to ensure that the liquid touches the cork to prevent drying is a moot point — remember “almost impermeable to water”, the cork is not going to act like a sponge. It’s the cork exposed to the open air that should be of concern, however an ample amount of humidity is all that is required to stop any exposed cork from drying out during long-term storage.

4. Cork problems are usually a sign of a bad cork or a cork that has passed its lifespan, not necessarily a sign of poor storage. Agglomerated corks last for about 1-3 years before beginning to disintegrate. Plastic corks eventually lose their elasticity, too. We suggest contacting the brewery to find out what type of cork they used, and its expected lifespan.

5. Long storage of a beer on its side can create a yeast ring (or water-mark) inside the bottle, which will not settle. Storing a beer upright will ensure that the yeast compacts to the bottom of the bottle.

7. Another real good reason for not storing a beer on its side is that long exposure to the cork (especially non-taint treated natural cork) can impart cork flavours within the beer. The alcohol in beer draws out that mouldy/musty character of the cork and in fact can taint the beer. In our opinion this doesn’t add any wanted complexity to the beer. Natural cork can also harbour certain fungal bacterias which are believed to create an off-flavour compound called 2,4,6, Trichloroanisole or simply TCA, which renders its victim lifeless and dull to the taste.

8. Many vintage beers are kept on beer shelves for quite some time before being sold. Don’t you think beer stores would shelve their corked beers like wine, if they were meant to be laid-down like wine?

9. We’ve spoken to dozens of brewers, who all recommend the upright method of beer storage. Even world-renowned brewers like Chimay and Riva suggest that you store all of their beers upright.

10. Just because a self-proclaimed “beer expert” recommends that beer be laid-down like wine, doesn’t mean that they are 100% correct. There’s more than one opinion in the world, and opinions change over time.

So now you have a better understanding on how to store a beer. Next, where to store? First, beer should never come into contact with heat or light. Both will wreak havoc on your delicate stash of brews, and we’re sure everyone has heard of the term “skunky”. This is often a sign of a “light struck” beer.
We recommend that you store your beer in a cool area, away from direct light, sources of heat and in a constant temperature environment. Speaking of which, temperature is very important, and a major factor in the storing and serving aspects of beer. It also can become a real balancing act. Beer benefits from cool constant temperatures; usually around 50-55 degrees F is ideal for most beers, and most beer collectors. Higher temperatures and you’ll risk shortening the lifespan of your beer, lower and you’ll induce chill haze (cloudy). For you beer geeks out there, we’ll break it down a bit further …
There are 3 storage temperatures used to lay beer down for maturation and/or storage. Not only will you want store your beers at these specific temperatures, but also you’ll want to serve them at the same. Your strong beers (like barleywines, tripels, dark ales) will be their happiest at room temperature (55-60F), most of your standard ales (like bitters, IPAs, dobbelbocks, lambics, stouts, etc) will be at cellar temperature (50-55F) and your lighter beers (like lagers, pilsners, wheat beers, milds, etc) will be at a refrigerated temperature (45-50F). Usually the higher alcohol, the higher temperature and lower alcohol, the lower temperature … you get the point.
Obviously it’ll be near impossible to regulate some of the above temperatures, unless you have a second fridge for beer or a cool basement. A compromise is to at least store those beers that are ideal at slightly higher temperature in a closet, away from light and environmental changes, or stay within the 50-55F range. As you get into beer cellaring, you’ll probably see many variations of these recommended temperatures, but ours are good averages to go by.
Note on refrigerators: Long-term use is not recommended. Refrigerators are designed to keep food dry, so dehydration of cork can become an issue (laid-down or upright). Corked beers that you wish to age long-term should be kept in a cellar, where moderate humidity levels might be more appropriate.
Cool. Now that you have an idea as to what to cellar and how, what can you expect a year or more down the road when you’ve patiently waiting to crack open your aging beers? The answer = who knows? There are way too many variables that come to play, on top of the variations within the different styles. Some beers age very well, others don’t. Some beers need only a year, while others can age for 25+ years. And, many breweries have no idea what their beer will taste like years down the road, while others can make pretty damn good predictions. It’s all part of the fun.
Some final advice: if you cellared your beer too cold, then serve it immediately you’ll get less carbonation, less aroma and less flavour. You’ll also risk numbing your palate. Use the store temp = serve temp rule and you’ll be fine.

Copied from nytimes.com

WHEN Matthew VandenBerghe brings home his favorite beers, he doesn’t make room for them in the fridge. He takes them to his beer cellar.

Skip to next paragraphIt’s a pitch-black basement room that stays 54 degrees year round. Sprayed concrete walls conduct the cool ground temperature while creating a cave-like appearance, and water he has had piped in drips down one side, both adding to the troglodyte effect and keeping the humidity between 60 and 70 percent.

Racks around the ceiling hold a few bottles of wine, but the shelves, which seem carved into the walls, mostly hold hundreds of bottles of beer that ages in the cellar, getting better over time.

“Every beer in there you could drink a year from now and it would be great,” said Mr. VandenBerghe, who owns Bottleworks Beer Store and Brouwers Café in Seattle. “But I’m planning to hold some for 20 to 25 years.”

A growing number of Americans practice the art of beer cellaring. In Europe, laying down brews isn’t seen as innovative; many beer stores have sections devoted to vintage beers.

But in the United States, a country with a preference for lagers, which lose flavor over time, most beer drinkers assume fresher means better.

For the most part, they’re right. Most beers were made to be consumed as soon as possible.

But certain types develop desirable flavors over time, like those with a high alcohol content, bottle-conditioned beers with yeast in the bottle, barley wines, lambics, barrel-aged and sour beers and winter ales.

Like many collectors, Mr. Sysak operates informal cellars in different parts of his house, using a range of temperatures to control each beer’s aging.

A three-door cooler in his garage stays between 62 and 65 degrees — Mr. Sysak never turns it on — making it ideal for most beers he considers appropriate for aging: barley wines, Imperial stouts, strong ales and lambics.

As some of the lambics reach their peak, Mr. Sysak moves them to a vanity cabinet in a bathroom that fluctuates between 57 and 62 degrees, which slows the aging process.

Beers he’ll serve in the next six months, like India pale ales and lower-alcohol beers, go in cooler refrigerators that will retard aging and preserve freshness.

“I had 15 cases of a beer I bought 15 years ago, and now I’m down to the last few amazing bottles,” Mr. Sysak said. “It’s like seeing your child go off to college for the first time. You’re never going to get that moment again.”